Amazed at dairy cattle prices!

Some of you buying dairy bull calves for $150, consider this. By the time you buy a bag or 2 of milk replacer at $65 a bag (here), you'll have invested about $250 in a bull calf that is not meat breed and so will not grow as fast nor muscle as well as a beef breed. You can go to the auction and purchase a weaned beef breed feeder calf at 350lbs for about $300-350, and have a calf that will grow faster, muscle better, and have more meat/bone than a dairy breed will. It will be butcher age a year earlier than that holstein or X, and not be near as bony. Just food for thought...

You're saying that the beef breed will be ready to go by 6 months?
That would be a year earlier than I butcher my Holsteins.

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Deja Moo; The feeling I've heard this bull before.

Rosewood, I understand what you are saying (I have told myself the same thing before). I paid $35 for a Jersey bull calf last year and put 50 lbs of milk replacer in him at $74. So I had $109 in him to start. And I'm going to do two this year, at least the price of milk replacer has gone down to $49 per 50lbs, but I don't have a price on the calves yet (Should get them in the next two weeks).... The reason it works nicely for me is that bottle calves are so easy to handle vs feeder calves. Also, there are only two of us, so we don't need a big beefy cow.

I really think I'm probably the only idiot who paid $150 for dairy bull calves.......and I already figured out it was not the most intelligent decision I've ever made! LOL! Next year I'll know better.

You are not the only "idiot" to ever pay 150 for dairy bulls.
Currently top near me is 110 but it has been 150 or so.
There are always cheaper ways to get animals. You learn as you go.

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Deja Moo; The feeling I've heard this bull before.

LOL!! A good heifer is never "worthless" and Jerseys especially. Prices are not as good(crazy) now as they have been in the past, but I still have a waiting list for $400 heifers......
But again, location has a lot to do with it.

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Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Nubians & Lamanchas
www.ozarkjewels.net

"Remember, no man is a failure, who has friends" -Clarence

I had a 10.5 old 7/8 Guernsey x Angus steer harvested a week ago and the processor said that he's seen 13 mo. old Angus steers not as big or long as this one was. HCW/hung weight was 560#. He weight taped at 824 about 6 weeks ago. Never left his mother's side and had very little grain. Mother, grass the first few months and towards the end and hay kept in front of him always was mostly what he ate... never any special foods for calves, never sick either.

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